eBay History Infographic 1995 – 2018

Did you know that eBay was originally called AuctionWeb or that the founder originally wanted to change the name of the marketplace to ‘Echo Bay’ but the URL was already taken so it was shortened to eBay?

16Best have put together an infographic filled with this and a ton of interesting factoids tracing the history of eBay from it’s AuctionWeb launch in 1995 through to the present day. Naturally the infographic has interesting buyer related fun facts such as revealing the most expensive item ever sold on eBay (which went for $168 million) but there are also some interesting insights for sellers too.

eBay Stats

Of course there’s a comparison to Amazon, but this is slightly misleading as Amazon are a retailer in their own right and we also need to bear in mind that eBay divested PayPal and their Magento interests whereas Amazon have pretty much held on to all their different business interests. There are also some comparisons to other sites such as Etsy, Rakuten and Alibaba.

For those wondering what to sell, it’s interesting to note that the bulk of eBay users are working adults – 61% of all eBay users are between 35 and 64 years old so that’s the sweet spot you want to appeal to, with 31% being aged 18 to 34 and just 7% are sliver surfers aged 65 and over.

SAM

10 months ago

61% of all eBay users are between 35 and 64 years old , not so good that….not getting the young ones anymore.
Where is the article??? with the History story…

Who cares where they came from.
Its more interesting where they are going..

DOWN THE PAN!!!!!!

They are pandering to the big companies and dumping all over the little business. sales down by massive margins. Google searches show they are dropping like an anchor.
But they seem unable to work out where they changed things and went wrong. Maybe the staff will realise before its too late.

Rob

10 months ago

If ebay are that bad and going down the pan how come my sales are up 100% compared to the same period last year? Approximately 5% of my turnover is from overseas sales through Global Shipping Programme.

northumbrian

10 months ago

the the doom and gloom prophets and ebay apocalypse naysayers have been around since we first used ebay
, we wish our business was A MILLION OR 2 BEHIND EBAY

Yes it is true! They are weeding out the little sellers. There was a policy change last year about the return/defect rate. I was doing great, doubled my sales compare to the year before and a month after this new policy they sent a message of I’m not doing good and 12 returns in 1 years is too much and they will limit my visibility and I can no longer list new items in my store. I was dumbfounded! It is not enough that half of those occasions the buyers were returning a different item and I had to give a full refund but they even kick me! But watch this! Ebay forgot to mention they removed half of my 290 unique listing! I had to find out myself! Uniquely listed one by one items I have to do it all over again!
Who is this benefit after all? I don’t make money any more and they no longer get my $500-$1000 fees! Quite backwards thinking. Plus they have the highest fees among all competitors. But overall I should be thankful because now I can find another cheaper platform and build my own website and sell with lower fees.

When you say “unique” listings, do you mean that nobody else sells the same items?

If not, then it is very clear who benefits, other sellers do and eBay do not lose a penny / cent in revenue.

SAM

10 months ago

Found it is the end thanks @tyler, it was not that good.
Anyway the more interesting article on that blog was “Social Networks and their importance in Ecommerce Gateways”…so if your looking for an article to write about Tamebay this would be something of interest to a lot of people.
What is scary in that one is Amazon in August 2017 have created a social media platform “still have not found that” lets hope it is as successful as G+.

Social is the one big threat to the corporate dominance of Amazon and lesser eBay. The smaller players are being squeezed out by the corporates and this is where we need to concentrate efforts and target customers. There may be eBay daily deals, but they cannot swamp our offers with their corporate clients and chinese VAT avoiders on FB and Insta.

northumbrian

10 months ago

we view social media selling similar to the old method of putting a card in the local shop window, works ok in a small area if its cheap enough, but hard to make a business from

SAM

10 months ago

@northumbrian not if you can do it correct, we know one girl who makes a fortune from makeup on Instagram and would never even look at selling on a place like eBay. We are relative novices but have felt comfortable enough to drop FBA this year and Google Adwords, and we gaining traction now through our social media especially on Facebook.
End of the day your not sharing your shop Window with everyone else.

We already see the millennials are not using the likes of eBay.

northumbrian

10 months ago

20 years ago we discovered ebay we were one of the only fish in the pond ,
now there are shoals of them, in fact there are more fish than water in the pond now

social media will be less effective and more costly the more success people have with it, lots of the excess fish will swim over from ebays pond